Mikel Arteta says Arsenal ‘would have been killed’ if they played against Tottenham

Mikel Arteta has defended Arsenal’s request to postpone Sunday’s north London derby and has suggested they would have been ‘killed’ even if they had gone ahead with it – just as they were earlier this season.

Although the Gunners had just one positive Covid case in the squad – midfielder Martin Odegaard – the Premier League agreed to postpone the trip to Tottenham citing long-standing and recent injuries, as well as players away on international duty.

The decision for the game to be postponed caused huge controversy and has seen pundits, fans and managers call for the rule to be scrapped, or at the very least clarified to only include Covid cases.

But Arteta has defended Arsenal’s position and says they would have been criticised just as much if they had played the match, saying his side were ridiculed and branded ‘naive’ when their Covid-hit squad pressed ahead with matches at the start of the campaign and lost all three of their opening games.

Asked to clarify how many Covid cases Arsenal had, Arteta replied: ‘We didn’t have the players necessary to put out a squad available to compete in a Premier League match. That is 100% guaranteed.

‘But this situation is, I think, a no-win situation.

‘When we played the first three games of the season, while other teams were postponing matches, and we played and we tried to play, and we were killed because people said, “Don’t be naive, because if you have that many players out, don’t play with your kids!”

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‘And now we postponed the match [against Spurs] for